1972
1971 1972 1973 Events * An Embattled and increasingly unstable Republican U.S. President Richard M. Nixon warns his EPA Director Bill Ruckelshaus about his constituents: "You better watch out for those crazy enviros, Bill. They're a bunch of commie pinko queers." * Ernest Mandel publishes Der Spatkapitalisimus, later published in 1975 as Late Capitalism. * Robert Paxton publishes Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order. * Bush Wren (Xenicus longpipes) becomes extinct. * China's population is 871.77 million. * A Cow Is Killed by a Meteroite in Valera, Venezuela (evidence of "black swan events") * U.S. Congress makes the IRS's Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division an full bureau in its own right as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms or BATF. Timeline January * January 2: President Richard M. "Tricky Dick" Nixon criples the U.S. space program for the next 4 decades by ordering development of the space shuttle. * January 22: Britain, Denmark, Ireland and Norway all cave to the inevitability of economic system effects and join the European Economic Community (EEC). * January 27: CREEP operative G. Gordon Liddy presents his Gemstone program proposal to Attorney General John Mitchell, John Dean and Jeb Stuart Magruder. The plan is a crime spree that includes burglary, warrantless private wiretapping, campaign sabotage, kidnapping, assault and the use of "honey traps" for blackmail. Mitchell complains that it is too expensive. * January 30: Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry, Northern Ireland as British troops fire on a civil rights march. Soldiers fired indiscriminately into the crowd of protesters, killing 13 and wounding 17. Northern Ireland: Eyewitness Accounts of 1972 "Bloody Sunday" Massacre Indict British Army February * February 5: News reports that the Nixon administration had agreed to sell 42 F-4 Phantom jets to Israel. * February 10: BBC bans the Wing's song "Give Ireland Back to the Irish." * February 12: Darwin Day * February 21: President Richard Nixon begins his historic visit to China, signs the Shanghai Communique. * February 23: Nixon's new AG nominee confirms that his department would not reopen the Kent State Massacre investigation. March * March 8: Japan officially reaffirms that the Senkaku Islands to be its territory based on its 1895 claim. May * May 15: Texas Air National Guard pilot George W. Bush has his last flight exam. What happened to George W. Bush after that? * May 15: U.S. Presidential candidate George Wallace of Alabama is shot and paralyzed from the waist down in an assassination attempt in Laurel, Maryland. * May 15: Okinawa Reversion Treaty enters into force. June * June: French Socialist Party and French Communist Party seal the "Union of the Left." * June 4: Angela Davis convicted of murder, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy. * June 17: A group of burglars is arrested while breaking in to the offices of the DNC at the Watergate hotel. This ultimately leads to the forced resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. * June 13: A different coverup. Nixon's AG Kleindienst tells press conference that the Justice Department considers the Kent State Massacre case is closed. Geschlossen. Ze overup vill continue! July * Law offices of Carol Scott, attorney for VVAW activist and member of the Gainesville Eight Scott Camil, are burglarized. August * August 1: Texas Air National Guard pilot George W. Bush is suspended from flying status because he fails to have an annual medical examination. During the five years that Bush is in the Texas Air National Guard from 1968 to 1973 he was never stationed in Vietnam or flew any combat missions. * August 22: Trelew Massacre in Rawson Penitentiary: mass execution of 16 political prisoners, militants of different Peronist and left organizations, by the conservative military government of Argentina. September * September 5: The Palestinian terrorist group Black September kills an Israeli coach and weightlifter and takes nine athletes hostage during the Olympic Games in Munich. Later, all die as police snipers open fire. * September 15: Washington, DC grand jury indicts E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy plus their 5 henchmen burglars. * September 17: "M*A*S*H" premieres on CBS-TV. October * October: Public opinion poll reveals most Americans do not recognize what the term Watergate refers to. * October 20: letter from U.S. Acting Assistant Legal Adviser for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Robert Starr states that the terms of the Okinawa Reversion Treaty cover the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands. * October 25: Washington Post reports Nixon's political sabotage plan and that H.R. "Bob" Haldeman controlled a slush fund to finance the sabotage and Watergate break-ins. November * November 22: North Vietnamese SA-2 anti-aircraft missile hit B-52 which later crashes near Nakhon Phanom, Thailand. December * December 11: Apollo 17 lands at the foot of the Taurus Mountains on the Moon. * December 18-29: Christmas bombings of Hanoi. * December 27: Harry Truman dies. * December 27: North Vietnamese government claimas that on this night MiG pilot Capt. Pham Tuan shoots down B-52.